We’ve already seen the wife of Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman make threats about moving the team out of Jackson County following the defeat of a sales tax referendum to help fund a new stadium. And now it’s apparently the turn of the Chiefs, whose owner Clark Hunt said all the usual non-threat threat things this weekend:
“We will approach it from a broader perspective going forward because time is short for us at this point and so we need to see what other options are out there for us,” Hunt said. “When we started on this process three years ago, it felt like we had a very long time, a long runway with about 9½ [years] left on our lease. We’re now down to 6½ and so I do feel very much of a sense of urgency.
“Arrowhead is a special place for our family and our fan base. That was one of the reasons that we focused on it with the last effort, but going forward it may make more sense for us to be in a new stadium.”
Hunt actually worked in a couple of standards from the stadium playbook: faking a move, but also the two-minute warning, raising the tension level by pointing out that the Chiefs’ lease expires in 2031, and so something needs to be done! True, that something could be as simple as “sign a lease extension,” but when you’re trying to get hundreds of millions of dollars in public money, you never want to pass up an opportunity to gin up some urgency.
Likewise, “just assessing our options” is a much safer move than actually threatening anything concrete, for a couple of reasons. First off, it allows you to duck criticism that you’re carpetbaggers willing to take the team wherever you can get the most public subsidies, which tends to make fans unhappy. But also not threatening anything in particular avoids too many questions about what those other options might be, and right now nobody else, whether in Missouri or Kansas or Greensboro, has anything like an offer on the table.
But! The owner of the Kansas City Chiefs said he’s looking at all options, and even though he already said that once at the start of the month, this time he explicitly said that “a new stadium” was one of those options, so.
Is this news? It seemed like news when I started typing this post, but honestly I’m not so sure now. Maybe Hunt said something else worthy of note?
In either organization’s first public statements since the night an April 2 ballot measure generated only 42% support, Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt said “it makes sense” for the Chiefs and Royals “to work independently” moving forward.
“The Royals are going to to be looking at options that may not include the (Truman) Sports Complex, and we’ll be doing the same thing,” Hunt said. “So I really think at this point it makes sense for us to go our separate ways.”
Okay, except the Royals and Chiefs were always on separate tracks: Though they both were after a cut of the sales tax money, they each would have required additional funding for their separate stadium plans, which would almost certainly have come from different sources.
Anything else?
“We’re just going to have to be open-minded in how we approach this. And that may involve a new stadium — it could be an open-air stadium, or it could be a dome stadium.”
Tl;dr: Now that the Chiefs owner isn’t getting $250 million in sales tax money from Jackson County, he’s going to have to think about the best way to get some other money from someone else. Clark Hunt only has $2 billion, after all, and his family only has $22.8 billion more, what do you want from him, blood?
Clark Hunt does not have $2 billion, he is worth $2 billion. Most of that worth comes from owning the Chiefs and thus cannot be brought to bear in an effort to build a stadium for obvious reasons. I’m glad the ballot measured failed and I see no reasons the Chiefs can’t play in Arrowhead forever, but this distinction is important.
True, Hunt doesn’t have $2 billion in cash.
On the other hand, the Chiefs franchise is probably worth well over $4 billion, based on the Broncos’ recent sale price. And, Hunt’s last offer was to pay $300 million toward a total renovation costing at least $800 million, but that $300 million is the bare minimum an owner has to contribute to get an additional $300 million from the NFL’s stadium fund.
So, Hunt should be expected to contribute much more than $300 million, even if some public contribution is eventually approved.
I’m pretty sure he could easily borrow funds against that valuation and pay for it all himself.
In other words he could stake his own money to build what he wants. Just like all the other poors have to do.
Watch them go to Kansas like Sporting KC did.
There’s an ideal venue waiting — the NASCAR track where I-70 meets I-435.